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Iran's Supreme Cyberspace Council - increased net censorship?

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is taking control of internet policy in the country leaving all decision making to the Supreme Cyberspace Council. Iran’s new decree issued on September 6, and mandated for four years, will pave the way for increased internet censorship in the country with the aim to eradicate outside influences deemed by many of Iran’s hard-line clerics as immoral.

Reforms? Don't hold your breath...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, well known in the country as the ‘moderate’ President, has for a long time pushed for an open internet citing it as essential to being able to educate the nation's youth to give them greater “knowledge and science” capabilities. “All my efforts are geared to ensure that the people of Iran will comfortably be able to access all information globally and to use it… I believe that all humans beings have a right, and all nations have a right to use them” he said in an interview with CNN in 2013.

Rouhani’s fight to influence Iran’s hard-line clerics to relax their views on internet policy in the country has been an arduous journey - a journey, however, which appears to be coming to an end. According to Iran Human Rights, Rouhani will head the Supreme Cyberspace Council, and he will report to Khamenei who (surprise) has hand-picked the other members of the council (mostly hard-line Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commanders), who see the internet as “used by the enemy to target Islamic thinking.” With hard-line clerics hell-bent on increasing internet censorship in Iran this will leave Rouhani’s vision for an open internet pretty much dead in the water.

Rouhani’s administration and other state bodies previously had some say in Iran’s internet policy - however, this comes to an end as Iran’s new decree orders for the “dissolution of other councils and parallel bodies” essentially giving all power to Iran’s hardline clerics aka the Supreme Cyberspace Council. Hadi Ghaemi from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said that the decree will “give a free pass to security agencies to block any site - or go after any individual - that challenges the official line.”

Justin Bieber broke the internet (in Iran anyway)

The Iranian government has endeavored to control the internet on numerous occasions including the introduction of their “smart filtering” system, which failed when images of Justin Bieber flaunting his ab-packed torso flooded Instagram. Although, this was likely due to Instagram encrypting connections between users’ devices and Instagram’s servers which made it difficult for any third party, such as Iran’s “smart filtering” to tell which accounts users connect to.

In 2014 the Iranian government granted 3G and 4G licences, a popular move with young Iranians, and increased much-needed bandwidth on home connections.

However, this raised great concern for some of Iran’s most conservative clerics including Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi who viewed high speed internet as “haram” meaning forbidden by Islamic law and violates “human and moral norms.”

Iran’s new decree, with the Supreme Cyberspace Council exclusively at the helm, will likely block Iranians from accessing a free and open internet, cutting them off from reading or posting controversial topics against the regime, denying them their right to access information and an open and free internet.

Cleansing the internet or as the Supreme Leader puts it to “purify the cyberspace to ensure the network’s security, promote an Islamic way of life, protect the privacy of society’s members and effectively combat infiltration and abuses by foreigners” is casting a dark cloud over millions of internet users in Iran. The future for an open internet is in serious jeopardy.

One way that millions of netizens bypass blocked websites such as those living in Turkey, Russia and, of course, Iran is by using a VPN. Find out more about how a VPN works so you can access your favourite sites and services!

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